Garlic mushroom cheeseburger

Handsome and I don’t often eat out, but when we do we are frequently unimpressed with the food that ends up on our table. When we want a pizza, we now make our own instead of having one delivered. But a burger used to be our go to order when eating out. We always enjoyed a good juicy burger wherever we went, except we have found there wasn’t a good take out joint near us, where we could just grab an amazing burger and eat it in front of the TV, if we were being particularly lazy one evening. So I said, let’s try one ourselves… It’s not the kind of thing I would usually make, but what the hell? Fast forward a couple of months and we eat a homemade burger about once a fortnight, and every time, we have it with our individual specified toppings, except the baic recipe always remains the same, as follows (this makes two big burgers):

Fry the onions in a small amount of oil until translucent and starting to brown on the edges. Place in a large bowl.

To the onions, add the beef, ground pepper, worcestershire sauce and garlic powder and combine with your hands.

Split the burger mix in half and shape into two large patties, remembering that the burgers will shrink as cooked, so try to shape them larger than your buns.

Place oil, garlic and a couple of grinds of freshly milled black pepper in a ziploc bag and smush the ingredients together to get the garlic integrated into the oil.

Add the mushrooms, close the bag and combine with your fingers (almost massaging) to make sure every mushroom is coated with garlicky oil.

Fry in a hot pan, turning often until each mushroom has developed a dark brown sticky garlicky glaze.

Put mushrooms to one side and prepare the burgers.

Grill, barbeque or fry the burgers for about 10 minutes (depending on your thickness), turning once. Try to get a good dark brown color on the burgers, which just adds to the flavor explosion!

While the burgers are cooking, get your toppings ready to go, Handsome likes tomato, lettuce, pickles, and anything else he can get his hands on. I like the burger with cheese and mushrooms…

When the burgers are cooked, keep them on the grill and place the cheese on top, then cover with a metal dome (you can use any heat proof dome you have, like a saucepan) to melt the cheese super quick.

Place the cooked ingredients on the bun as quick as you can and eat! Beats a take out burger hands down…